Liz Manne kicked off the 90's joining Ira Deutchman at New Line's specialty spin-off, Fine Line Features. She left the company after a shakeup and joined Sundance Channel in early1998. Now, as the Channel's Executive Vice-President, Programming & Marketing, she is the outlet's face forward at Festivals and events. Along the way, she has been a part of the shifting independent film environment.

Manne recently shared a holiday wish list with industry insiders and media. Sampling a few of the entries gives a good indication of her motivations as the decade comes to a close:

-- "I wish companies would take more risks with films that really need their help."

-- "I wish there would be a moratorium on reporting box office grosses in major media outlets."

-- "I wish the US would get over its obsession with youth culture and start to value life experience and the beauty of imperfection and struggle."

-- "I wish all the archives, cinematheques, museums and non-profit organizations who work for the empowerment of individual artists loads of financial support."

-- "I wish individual artists all the grant money they can get their hands on."

-- "I wish for more films of daring, originality, wit, passion, and risk."

-- "I wish all the investors a good return on their investment, so they can come back again and again.

On a cold December morning, Mark Rabinowitz and I met with Liz in her Midtown Manhattan Sundance Channel office. The room is clearly decorated with representations of movies she likes: a "Gummo" poster, photographs of the landscape from "My Own Private Idaho," and a poster for the movie, "Trans." [Eugene Hernandez]

indieWIRE: Looking at Fine Line, what were some of the changes that yousaw taking place in the marketplace from the time period when youstarted through when you left the company?

Liz Manne: It's interesting, because I was thinking about Fine Line theother day. You know, we started in December 1990, so it is almost[having] its 10 year anniversary, and that's a chunk of history, that'sa solid amount of time for a company to be in business. Fine Line cameout of work that Ira Deutchman and I were doing as consultants to NewLine after Ira left Cinecom, which was I think January '89. Hestarted an independent production consulting company called TheDeutchman Company, which was basically a precursor to RedeemableFeatures which he runs now. And I came to work for him shortlythereafter. And I would say for about a year and a half, two yearsalmost, I was mostly working on the marketing/consulting side of thingswith Ira. But he was also doing things in production/development. Whatwe did were films like "To Sleep With Anger" and "Straight Out ofBrooklyn" and "Metropolitan" and "sex lies and videotape." During thatyear and a half, two year period, those were the four biggest films. Wealso worked on a couple of kickboxing movies too, to pay the rent[laughs].

I remember agonizing over the terms -- how arewe going to position this? Is this called "specialized film"? Is thiscalled "art film"? And really, even the phrase "independent film" wasn'tthat well-known. I think that people can definepornography a lot quicker than they can define independent film thesedays.

This was probably right at the beginning of the time period where therewas that year at Sundance where it was like the New Black Cinema. Youhad that series of years where one year was the New Black Cinema andnext year was the New Women's Cinema and the year after that was NewQueer Cinema. I can't remember exactly which years were which, but itwas this sort of idea with independent film that it was discoveringniche audiences that were really totally un-represented or terriblymisrepresented in mainstream Hollywood pictures. Of course then, noneof the "minority" films are the films that really broke through. Thefilms that really broke through were films like "sex lies and videotape"which were basically your white male films [laughs]. But that film wasdealing with sexuality and relationships in a way that mainstreamHollywood wasn't dealing with. And that became a bit of a breakthrough.But that's the environment that we were dealing with when we started thecompany.

I'm sure Ira still has a copy of the announcement of this specialized filmcompany...and they had a headline about us on the front page of Variety whenwe announced the company in December 1990. Back then it was really bignews. I remember agonizing over the terms -- how are we going to positionthis? Is this called "specialized film"? Is this called "art film"? Andreally, even the phrase "independent film" wasn't that well-known. Ofcourse, the Independent Feature Project existed, and people talked aboutAmerican independent film, but they didn't talk about independent film ingeneral. And I remember no one wanted to call it "arthouse films." Thatfelt too ghettoized and too small.

So we were striving to position things, and I remember just thinking,okay, "sex lies and videotape" did about $25 million, and "A Room With aView" did about $22 - 23 million, and it was the sort of notion that thethreshold on the gross for films in this marketplace [for] the so-calledspecialized film, was in the low $20's. In the first two years of Fine Linewhen we started, we had the two highest grossing independent films each ofthose years. The first year was Gus van Sant's film "My Own Private Idaho"and the second was "The Player" by Robert Altman. And I think "My OwnPrivate Idaho" only grossed maybe about $11-12 million, but again, for afilm with explicit homosexual representation in 1991, that was a verysignificant box office gross, and that was the highest grossing film in theindependent film sector that year. And the next year, "The Player" was,again at about that $25 million threshold level. So we wanted to bepositioning the films to be able to gross $10 million or $15 million, andthose were the huge hit numbers, whereas a lot of independent films weregrossing, and of course they still do, $1 - 2 million. So we didn't want tostructure the business so it was in the Zeitgeist world or the Strand worldor even at that point the Orion Classics, because their orientation wastowards much more conservative grossing patterns.

What's happened obviously in the ten years since then, is that first ofall, companies -- mostly led by Miramax paving the way, and many othercompanies including Fine Line with a film like "Shine" or "Waking NedDevine" from Searchlight, and Gramercy -- certainly opened the gates on acouple of film titles, all bets are off on the numbers now. $100million gross...$120 million gross for "Blair Witch." "Pulp Fiction" wasthe first one to cross the $100 million line, increasing blurring of thelines between what's the difference between an independent and a majorstudio, what's the difference between Miramax and a studio, what's thedifference between New Line and a studio? Those things are justbecoming, I call it a Talmudic discussion, you can go on and on abouthow to define the notion of independence. And in that, the very exercisebecomes increasingly less meaningful or interesting.

iW: It's almost like the definition of pornography, "I can't define it,but I know it when I see it."

As Isaid, nobody ever got killed with a hard-on. I mean, I'd rather seesexuality on screen any day than irresponsible violence...To me,that's the most interesting recent change....right nowit's very much news and it's very barrier-breaking.

Manne: Yeah, but you know what? I think that people can definepornography a lot quicker than they can define independent film thesedays. That's ironic! And if you want to know about the change in thelast one year, what's the most recent change? Well, what about all theexplicit sexuality. And I mean explicit sexuality. You are seeing erectpenises on screen now. Listen, I'm no shrinking violet, I can takepretty much anything on screen, but I remember sitting up at the TorontoFilm Festival looking at people to the left and right of me going, "Whatis this that they're watching?! " And bless me with my delicatesensibilities, and I'm not against it or judging it in any way, but I'msitting there observing something, going "Wow, this is a change in whatwe're seeing in movies," and I think it's a very healthy thing. As Isaid, nobody ever got killed with a hard-on. I mean, I'd rather seesexuality on screen any day than irresponsible violence...To me,that's the most interesting recent change and that's something that fiveyears from now, ten years from now, it won't be news, but right nowit's very much news and it's very barrier-breaking,

And most of what people will probably be talking about in terms of thechange in the last couple of years is digital. That's the thing that'sgoing to spring to mind. It's the lowering of economic barriers,it's greater, easier access, chances with the forms. I mean, [Harmony Korine's] "juliendonkey-boy" is one of the most interesting films of the year, and Ithink because it was able to take aesthetic chances because of the lowercost. The fact that he could use spycameras to shoot and multiple cameras at one time, and he ended upediting down from the 70 hours of footage that was shot. It becomes a very,very different type of art form as a result of that kind of technology.And someone like Harmony [Korine], I think [he] is going to go down in history notonly as one of the great cinema artists, but one of the great artists,period, of our generation, because he is so revolutionary in hisaesthetics and his use of medium. And I see someone like JulianGoldberger [director and writer of "Trans"] as right there with him in terms ofdoing so many different kinds of things with his aural landscape,combinations of music and sound design and film and improvisational work.To me, these are by far the most interesting filmmakers working today.And that's not to take anything away from the masters, but this is where Iam left going, "Wow, that's something new, that's interesting!"